AC

In the eight years since the Sept. 11 attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller has spent nearly the entire time focused on one enemy: al-Qaeda. Thousands of terrorist operatives have been killed or captured. Terrorist safe havens and training grounds in Afghanistan where operatives were trained have been destroyed. Military forces largely have shattered al-Qaeda's leadership in Iraq. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden and top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, who once closely managed al-Qaeda's day-to-day operations, have been driven into seclusion. Now, Mueller and counterterrorism analysts are tracking the emergence of a new threat. Al-Qaeda has morphed into a fractured network of small terrorist franchises strewn across Asia, the Middle East and Africa. In Yemen, according to Senate testimony by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, a "jihadist battleground" is rising amid growing political upheaval and poverty. Blair says there are concerns that al-Qaeda could establish a "regional base of...